A number of different device management platforms exist including, for example, Dell's Cloud Client Manager. These device management platforms can allow a number of different types of devices, including, for example, thin clients, zero clients, tablets, and smartphones, to be monitored and managed from a single location (i.e., from the cloud). To allow this monitoring and management, a device agent is installed on each device so that the management server can communicate with the device agent to implement a desired type of monitoring or management. Such devices will hereafter be referred to as “managed devices.”
One important management technique performed by the management server is the imaging of managed devices (typically thin clients) or the deployment of packages (which may include applications or other content) to the managed devices (hereinafter generally referred to as “deploying an update” to managed devices). Typically, when an update is to be deployed to a group of managed devices, the management server will send a notification to the managed devices informing them to download and install the update. With a large number of managed devices, this can result in high network traffic and load on the management server. In many cases, this high network traffic and load can result in the download of the update failing on many managed devices thereby prolonging the deployment process.
With regards to imaging, the size of the image can oftentimes be quite large (e.g., between 4 and 16 GB). The large image size can place an enhanced load on the management server during the imaging process. For this reason, many device management platforms will place a limit on the number of managed devices that can concurrently download an image from the management server. This limit can further prolong the imaging process, especially in environments having thousands of managed devices. Even if no limit is placed on the number of managed devices that can concurrently download an update, the deployment process can take a substantial amount of time including multiple days in large environments.